


Triangle

by apple_pi



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Hobbits, LOTR, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:04:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pippin's love is wide enough to be shared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triangle

**Author's Note:**

> The first fanfic I ever wrote was called [Beginnings That Feel Like Endings, and the Other Way Round](http://archiveofourown.org/en/works/2429). It was my story of how Peregrin Took and Diamond of Long Cleeve met and became friends and lovers, and it is still one of my favorites. After I wrote it, I came to think of Merry and Pippin as a couple in a loverly sense, also; but I still loved my Diamond and I wondered often how she would view Pippin's past with Merry in the storyline I had created.
> 
> This story was written for Marigold's Tale Challenge 13, but has been brewing for a long time in my head. It differs from the storyline I created in _Beginnings_ only in that Estella Bolger is not yet a part of Merry's life here. It might be helpful to read that earlier story, but if you don't want to, here are a few facts I created in that -verse: Diamond is a widow; her husband died in the Lockholes before the Four Travellers returned to the Shire. She lives alone on a small farm in the North Farthing, and her craft is weaving. She knew Pippin for over a year before they became lovers, and it has been over a year since they became engaged to be married.

The summer night was warm but not hot, and they faced one another with a thin quilt drawn to their waists. They spoke quietly after their loving, touching desultorily, murmuring.

"I'm to go to Brandy Hall next week," Pippin said eventually. "Would you like to visit with me?"

"Mmm." Diamond ran one hand over his shoulder. "Merry is avoiding me."

Pippin's teeth glimmered as he opened his mouth to protest; she raised one eyebrow and he sighed, instead.

"Tell me why, Pippin," she said. "He is almost as dear to me as you are." Her voice did not insist; it was implacable, nonetheless.

"It is... complicated," Pippin said. His face, despite adulthood and recent good feeding, was still the heart-shaped face of a tween, sweet and youthful. Only his eyes revealed his tempering, and sometimes his bow-shaped mouth, which thinned in pain or knowledge at times. "You are dear to him, too." The green of his eyes was washed to clear grey by the moonlight falling through the window. "Perhaps..." His lips thinned now, eyelids fell to hide his expression: "Perhaps he thinks you too dear."

"Ahhh," Diamond said, wonder in her voice.

She had lived long alone, had Diamond of Long Cleeve, both solitary and stubborn. It had shocked her when she came to love Peregrin Took; snuck up on her and frightened her so she resisted it for a long time. Handfast for over a year now, she still half-resented her own surrender at times, and most of all when she felt her heart, all against her will, deepening in its love for the headstrong Took. As it did now, when he had the courage to trust her with the truth. "And they call you a fool," she murmured.

Pippin almost-smiled, a sidewise quirk of his lips. "I learned it from him," he said in oblique agreement.

She pulled Pippin forward to rest against her chest, his sharp nose laid along one soft breast and curly hair tickling her chin. "Merry is dear to you." She ran her hands down his scarred back. "And to me."

He nodded and rubbed small circles on her hip.

"When did you and he stop making love?" she asked quietly. He stiffened for a long moment beside her, and she felt his exhale across her skin, warm and too quick.

"I... I don't know." He drew in a breath, slowly this time, his taut muscles relaxing bit by bit, as he decided, once more, to trust. "It's been a long time, but it never... stopped. It slowed after Frodo left - just sort of trickled off. It seemed... too painful, almost."

"For him?" she asked.

"For both of us," he confessed. "But then there were times when it was perfect, and comforting, but they were less and less frequent, until we stopped completely - he never - he never initiated it. Two years ago? Something like that. For me..." He stopped and she felt his breathing, ragged against her body, wanting not to speak.

So she did. "For you it never stopped," and the truth sang through her words. "Even now you love him, would love him." She pressed her nose into his hair, inhaling the spicy-sweet scent of him.

"I would not hurt you," he said finally, warm air skittering across her skin, fingertips stiff and still against her hip.

"No," she said meaningfully. "You would not hurt me." She closed her eyes and wondered if he would hear what she intended, if she would have to say it more clearly. She did not want to. Words were hard, sometimes - hard and solid as stones, and as hurtful if they went wrong.

Pippin raised his head to stare into her eyes. "Do you...?" He stopped himself, and she could not help her smile. She didn't answer, but the smile must have been enough, for his face flickered so quickly through a vast range of emotions that the smile turned into a laugh.

"I - you - and..." His eyes were round and jaw slack; she brought one hand to it and tipped his chin up, shutting his mouth gently.

"I wondered." She put her hand on the back of his head and pressed it firmly down again to her chest. "You told me you had never lain with another lass, but you do not make love as though you are... inexperienced."

"Diamond!" He rolled away and pressed his burning face into the pillow.

 

"Oh, _Pippin_," she responded with fond vexation. "How simple did you think me? You make love with care and tenderness and passion, as I am sure you did from the first time ever you touched someone. Merry." She added it just to watch his shoulders twitch up, and grinned again; his face was still hidden, but his ears were visibly flushed even in the moonlight. "But you do not make love like one who comes to it new, fumbling and unsure of yourself."

"You never - you never asked about it," Pippin muttered, turning his head to peer at her with one squinting eye.

Diamond drew one shoulder eloquently up. One lock of curly hair lay over her shoulder, a twist of shadow down the slope of her breast. "What would I have said? You are a hobbit grown, Peregrin Took - I did not assume that I was the only one to come to this partnership with a past. If you had wanted to tell me, you would have."

"I did want to," he said very low, turning his head toward her. Closing his eyes. "Many times."

_Ah, love_. She lay her hand on his cheek. "And now you have. And I..." She drew in a deep breath. "I love you both so much." She thought of Meriadoc Brandybuck.

Tall, as tall as Pippin, and his elder by eight years, hers by thirteen. He'd a scar across his forehead, a soft brown seam that he covered with his hair until he forgot it again. He had a quick laugh and fox-slanted eyes, and a reputation for shrewdness that she knew to be well-earned. Where Pippin was still whip-thin, he was filled out, broad in the shoulder and with the start of a proper hobbit belly beneath his weskit. He had clever, long-fingered hands and steady, sturdy feet to match his steady, sturdy mind, and Diamond knew he had watched her from the day they met, watched her with Pippin. Judged her, and, to be fair, found her worthy. He'd trusted her with the most precious thing in her life, with a generosity that amazed her, now she knew its true extent.

She'd wondered, indeed. Spent enough evenings with the both of them to have wondered. Seen how he looked at Pippin's mouth, sometimes, concentrated on it; seen how he might go quiet and intent watching Pippin dance, or drink, or laugh.

She'd seen Merry look at her the same way.

"Diamond," said Pippin. She opened her eyes to meet his; she hadn't realized she'd closed them. He shifted to kiss her hand, a moist press of his lips to her palm, and she shivered. "What shall I do?" His voice was plaintive, questing.

She wriggled closer to him, bent her head to lay her forehead and nose against his. Stared into his eyes, blurred by proximity till they almost crossed. "I don't mind sharing," she said. Unable to stay still after such a statement, she shivered, again, and pushed one arm under his neck and lay the other over his waist, so he was within her arms and she within his.

He didn't reply for a long time, so long that she half-dozed, tucked within the circle of his embrace. His voice was felt as much as seen when it finally came again. "I would not hurt either of you."

She listened, ran her fingers down his back. "Would it hurt Merry?" She was genuinely curious. "To know that he was still so loved?"

"But he and I - we can never - it would not..." Pippin sighed.

"You and he cannot live together in Crickhollow again," she said for him. "You can never live together, with or without me, because he shall be the Master of Buckland and you shall be the Thain, and the both of you must marry and raise families."

"Yes."

"But Pippin, you knew that before you ever met me, before you and he stopped your loving - which was a terrible mistake, I think." Pippin pushed his nose into her ear and smiled. She was nearly always certain, his Diamond, and often exasperated, as now. "Whatever did you think you would _do?_"

He shifted to kiss her neck, the smooth sensitive place just below her delicately curved ear, tasting her skin just a little, inhaling the scents of sex and sweat and bergamot and lemon. "I don't know. When we thought about it at all, we thought we would... I don't know. Grow up, grow out of it."

"Grow out of love?" She pinched his backside. "I take back what I may have implied about you not being a fool."

"Oi, Diamond, that's not very nice."

"If you wanted nice you should have picked another lass to bed," she asserted.

"I, bed you?" He pulled her earlobe gently, with his teeth. "I believe it was you asked me to stay."

"And I believe I told you from the start that I was not an easy person," she retorted. "And you are not going to distract me from the topic, which is, would it be better to tell Merry you still love him, and give that love to him, and sort out the details of it all later, or would it be better to let him drift away, never knowing, marry some innocent lass who will never understand why he is distant and half-alive, lead a life of surface gaiety and underlying sadness."

Pippin laughed, wholeheartedly, giggles bursting from his mouth and trickling into her hair as she sat up in exasperation - there it was again - and glared at him.

"Well?"

He rolled onto his back and looked up at her, laughter still bubbling quietly in his chest. "Well, I think that perhaps you have the right of it. Or perhaps you just want to get rid of me by thrusting me into the arms of my best friend."

Her light smack stung, but he grinned unrepentantly. "Peregrin Took, you are incorrigible." She leaned over and kissed his arm where she'd slapped it, then lay down again, yawning. "And a ninnyhammer as well if you think you can rid yourself of me so easily."

"I can never rid myself of you," he said, wrapping his long arms and legs tightly around her.

"No, you cannot," she agreed. She wriggled her body against his, so that he sighed and tensed happily. "And Pippin, love is not the kind of thing you diminish by sharing." She kissed his neck.

"Aye," he said. "That much I know is true."

She was mostly asleep when she heard his voice again, a murmur to himself: "We never talked of how much Merry loves you, though."

He rode away the next morning, back to Great Smials and his work beside his father. "I'll be back in five days," he said, kissing her at the gate.

"I'll be ready," she told him, and went back into her empty house with mingled relief and loneliness, as she did so often now.

~*~

Five days later they sat upon Pippin's pony and rode through a soft grey mist. "Why does it always wait until I have to be out _in_ it?" Diamond asked, tugging her hood forward.

Pippin pulled her back into his body more snugly. "At least it isn't cold," he said. "And we can stay at the inn at Frogmorton tonight."

"Thank heavens for that," she replied, and they rode in silence for a while, until Pippin began humming and she joined in with the words.

_The road will stretch beneath our feet;  
Journey on, journey on.  
With luck we shall no stranger meet;  
Journey, journey on._

The earth is soft, the air is sweet;  
Journey on, journey on.  
In sun and rain we'll move so fleet;  
Journey, journey on.

I'll travel far in this fair land,  
With you beside me, dear;  
We'll walk the road, oh, hand in hand,  
And shall no evil fear.

In soft grey mist and hot sunshine,  
Journey on, journey on,  
We'll look ahead and never pine,  
Journey, journey on.

And in weather rough and weather fine,  
Journey on, journey on,  
I shall be yours as you are mine,  
Journey, journey on.

I'll travel far in this fair land,  
With you beside me, dear;  
We'll walk the road, oh, hand in hand,  
And shall no evil fear.

"I'm glad you sing with me now," Pippin said cheerfully.

"Sometimes," she replied, smiling.

"Even that." He lay his hand on her thigh, and they rode quietly again, Pippin still humming.

"Pippin..." She spoke hesitantly.

"Hmm?"

"Have you thought what you will say to Merry?"

He didn't answer immediately; the only sounds were of the pony's feet on the path, and the soft drip of water from the trees around them. "Well, no. I wanted to talk to you, too - there are other things I want to ask you before I speak to him at all."

"Such as?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, swaying in the saddle with her. "Such as. Well, you see, there is something I wanted to _say_ to you, first, I suppose, and then I can ask you about it, and then I'll know better what to do. I hope."

"I'm intrigued," she said, leaning against him.

"I don't know if I can say it, now," he confessed after a long hesitation. "I can't see your face."

"Pippin."

"And I'm a coward."

"Peregrin Took." She twisted to look at him. "Just start talking - something I know you are quite skilled at - and it'll fall out of your mouth."

He grinned at her. "All right, I suppose." She straightened again, and he stared blankly down at her head for a moment. "What -" He cleared his throat. "What do you think about... me. And Merry?"

"I love you both," she said promptly.

"No." He swallowed audibly. "When you think of us... _together_ \- as, erm, lovers - what do you think?"

She shook for a moment, and he tensed, then realized she was laughing. "Do you mean," she giggled, "what exactly do I think you _do?_ Shall I describe my suppositions to you, or would you care to draw me illustrations?"

"_Diamond!_" He blinked, his face hot. "Well. I just meant - does it horrify you. But apparently not." He tried to sound prim, which was difficult in the face of her continued mirth.

"Mmm," she said at last, "I am not horrified at all. Actually I find it quite, ah. Hmm. Quite thought-provoking." She wriggled back against him and his jaw dropped.

"You are - you - have you thought about it a _lot?_" he managed to ask.

"A fair bit," she admitted. On a suspicion, he raised his hand to touch her unseen cheek. "What?" she asked.

"You're blushing," he accused.

"Well, yes," she retorted, craning around. She was, indeed, quite pink, her green eyes bright and generous mouth pursed, struggling not to smile. "I am not at all sure that I should find thoughts of you and your best friend in the world quite so stimulating, but I do." She blushed harder and he grinned at her; she poked out her tongue at him and turned back to look at the road ahead.

"Diamond, do you remember how our entire conversation began last week?" he said.

"You asked if I wanted to come to Brandy Hall with you," she answered after a moment.

"And I believe I also mentioned my thought that perhaps Merry is avoiding you because he is attracted to you."

Diamond went very still. "Yes," she said. "You did say that."

"And then we got very distracted from that and we didn't speak of it again." He looped the reins around the pommel and wrapped her in his arms; Surefoot the pony continued her fast, steady walk. "But we should."

Diamond sighed, an expansion and contraction of her body against his arms and belly. "Yes, perhaps."

"Diamond, you said to me... you said, _I don't mind sharing_." Pippin pushed her hood down, ignoring her small sound of protest, and nuzzled his nose into her cloud of dark curls. "The thing I wanted - I want - to say to you is. That. I don't mind sharing, either. If you love him, and he loves you."

Somewhere deep in her chest, Diamond felt a burning so painful and bright she knew it was marking her forever. She sat very still, only rocking slightly with the pony's pace, in Pippin's arms, and finally brought her hands up to hold his forearms where they crossed her body.

"Diamond?" he ventured.

"You surprised me," she said, and then wiped her sleeve across her nose and eyes.

"Are you angry?"

"Don't be a fool," she said, and then she laughed, a small, choked sound. "That word is spoken more about you than you deserve."

"I've always thought it over-used," he agreed. He leaned round her, straining to see her face. "Are you all right, though?"

She half-turned in the saddle to let him view her, red nose and damp eyes and all. "I am better than all right. I think I am quite wonderful, and I think that you are, too." She kissed him quickly and then turned away again, settling back into the curve of his body.

"And now I can try to think of what I want to do," he said quietly.

"It will come, love," she replied, just as low. "Wait until it seems right, and the words will come."

They rode out from under the trees, on for a long, dizzy way, before either of them spoke again. "This doesn't make things simpler in most ways," she remarked.

"No." Pippin hummed for a little while. "Things don't always have to be simple, though," he added.

"Complexity can be strength," she said, thinking of her loom and the work she did there.

His arms tightened round her again. "We shall make this our strength."

~*~

Pippin sauntered into the study where Merry scribbled endlessly and perched on the edge of the desk. "You work too much," he said.

Merry laid his quill aside and squinted at him. "I'm merely making up for some hobbits, who wouldn't know work if it snuck up and bit them." He jumped up and embraced his cousin, grinning.

"It would have to be very sneaky work, indeed, for me to not evade being bitten." Pippin laughed and thumped Merry's back. "What are you doing in here? The rain stopped hours ago and it's a beautiful day."

"Is it? Ah, we should go for a ramble," Merry said, stretching his frame.

"We should," came Diamond's voice, and Merry's eyes widened, gazing past Pippin to the doorway.

"And are you here, too?" Merry smiled and came to hug her, but neither Pippin nor Diamond missed his slight hesitation.

He was so comfortable and solid to the touch, Diamond thought, flushing a bit as she smiled and stepped back. "Pippin invited me for the Litheday festivities. I hope you don't mind?"

"Mind? Of course I don't mind." He grinned. "The celebrations do get a bit wild here, though. We Brandybucks know how to throw a party."

"The parties begin tomorrow," Pippin put in with big, sad eyes, "but I'm hungry now. Can't we throw together a picnic basket and avoid everyone for a little while?" He grinned winningly.

"That sounds lovely," Merry said. "Come on, we'll have our tea outdoors."

It took them another hour to make their escape - Saradoc and Esmeralda had to be greeted and a host of cousins avoided - but finally they slipped out a side door of Brandy Hall and set off across the fields. "Let's go to the willow grove," Pippin suggested easily.

Merry glanced at him, hefting his basket. "Are you sure?"

"No one will find us there," the Took pointed out.

"I - alright."

"How far is it?" Diamond asked, puffing and gripping her armful of blankets tightly.

"Not far at all," Pippin laughed, shifting his own basket to his other hand as he relieved her of one of them. "But far enough that no one ever found us when Merry and I escaped there."

"We wriggled out of a lot of chores that way," Merry agreed. And if his cheerful face was pink, it was probably the warm summer air.

~*~

The rain had stopped early that morning, and the ground was nearly dry by the time they ducked through the sweeping branches of a willow and into a perfect little clearing. The August sun lay like honey across the grass, and the three hobbits settled near the eastern edge of the glade to hoard its beams, which would soon dip behind the crowns of the trees.

"What time is it?" Diamond asked as she cast her blankets out upon the grass.

"Nearly dinner time, really," Merry said, glancing at the angle of the sun. "Good thing we brought so much food."

Meat and bread and cheese and fruit and crackers and cake and wine all disappeared in prodigious quantities as they sat on the soft earth. The shadows of the trees crept nearer, but this late in summer, the sun would not set for hours yet, and darkness would not be complete until nearly midnight.

At last the remaining scraps of food were packed away in their baskets and the three friends lounged lazily. Merry and Pippin sat beside one another, telling scandalous stories of their wickeder days; Diamond lay with her head on Pippin's lap and one hand perilously near to Merry's.

Meriadoc was laughing loudly at some awful tale, and Diamond tipped her head back to catch Pippin's eye. He tilted his head down at her, eyebrows raised, face happy and open, still half-laughing at his cousin's merriment. She smiled and slid her eyes toward Merry, then back at Pippin - unmistakable gesture of consent and urging.

The wine buzzed faintly in Pippin's veins as he smiled at her. He looked up, and at Merry.

"Oh, he never did like turnips after that, did he?" Merry sighed, his laughter trailing away into chuckles.

"Merry," Pippin said, and when Merry looked quizzically at him, the smile still lingering on his face, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean across. To cup Merry's cheek with one hand - the other steadying and firm upon Diamond's shoulder - and run his thumb gently across Merry's lower lip. To kiss him. To close his eyes and fall headfirst back into the deepest and oldest and most constant love he had ever known.

Merry's mouth opened almost without thought, eyes falling closed, lips parting to Pippin's gentle pressure as his face heated beneath his hand. And then he jerked back and away, blue-grey eyes wide and dark and frightened. "Pippin -" He stared at him for a moment and then his gaze flicked to Diamond. "I'm sorry," he gasped, and then he stopped talking, because he felt her hand, sure upon his, and he looked at that for a while.

Diamond kept her hand where it was and sat up, facing them both, so that they sat in a rough triangle, knees touching. "Merry," she said, and her voice shook slightly. "Why did you take yourself away from us?"

"I - I didn't," he denied. It did not occur to him to misunderstand her, not with her fingers stroking his lightly, not with Pippin's hand upon his knee. Merry shook his head hard, his face slightly desperate. "I couldn't, not from Pippin."

"But from me," she said, and her voice was as hard as her name, and as lucent. "And from Pippin, when he is with me. And -" she leaned forward, bringing his hand up and clasping it with both of hers, her voice growing softer, less sure, "you did take yourself from Pippin. A part of yourself."

He stared at her, and then at Pippin, who nodded, his green eyes clear. "I have missed that, Merry," he said quietly.

"But I cannot," Merry said, his voice begging them for understanding. "It is not _right_ \- you are together, and there's no room. No room for me." The light fled from his face, and bitterness laced his words. "You should not ask it of me. I'm not strong enough to watch what I can't have, what I am denied."

Diamond lifted his hand to her cheek; Pippin leaned forward again to brush his lips softly across Merry's hard, angry mouth.

"Nothing is denied you," he said, and rested there, his eyes closed, waiting for Merry to leave his darkness and fear behind.

"I don't understand," Merry whispered, his breath warm and skittish against Pippin's mouth.

"Kiss him, you fool," said Diamond kindly, and she opened his fingers and bent her head to lay a kiss in his palm. This done, she placed his hand upon Pippin's leg and sat back again, only her knees touching the other two.

Merry faced Pippin, his eyes the clear wet blue of a rain-washed sky. "Should I?" he asked.

Pippin surged forward to his knees, grasping Merry's face. "Yes," he said, impatient and wanting and smiling, and bent to his lover's mouth.

Diamond watched and felt herself heat and rouse. So beautiful, the two of them. How often had she and Pippin kissed? She did not know but knew that it was never _thus_ \- never so beautifully as this, she was certain. Merry's face, blissful and sweet, tipped back and vulnerable, the line of his throat so perfect her fingers longed to stroke it. Pippin's mouth sealed over Merry's, the flash of a pink tongue and his chestnut curls tumbling over his cheekbones and eyes as he leaned down. The way his body curved and tensed. Merry's hands, hovering uncertainly and then reaching to hold Pippin's shoulders firmly, to slide knowledgeably to his back and skim down the long, muscular sweep of it.

And then they broke apart, smiling and breathing hard, and she felt an twisting ache in her belly, watching them watch each other.

They looked at her at the same moment, and she smiled at them so hard she thought her face must break from the pain and perfection of it.

But -

"Oh no, oh no," Pippin crooned, and he reached for her hands and drew her to him for a kiss as delicious and full of promise as the first ripe apple of the autumn.

She could taste the wine in his mouth, and his love, and she closed her eyes, her lips curving against his as the ache dissipated, unraveled. And when she felt Merry's warm, calloused hand upon her neck she shivered and leaned back, falling effortlessly into his waiting arms.

He kissed differently than Pippin, harder and more fiercely, desperate and hungry, and when his hands slid into her hair she moaned a little, dizzied and overwhelmed by it. Pippin laughed behind her, high and sweet like music, his fingers stroking her back, her shoulders, her hair, weaving with Merry's, buried in her black curls.

They kissed for hours, lying twined together on the blankets, until their lips were swollen and sensitive, until the sun slid down the sky and the dusk claimed them, until crickets sang and every touch made them moan and giggle and cry out softly. And it was under the warm bright stars of summer that they lay together, the three of them, and were lost and found. And Merry claimed her and he claimed Pippin, and both of them answered _yes_ to his seeking, to his claiming, and claimed him in return, until finally they lay surfeited with love, breathing gently and so entangled that no one knew where he began and she ended and another began again.

"I'm hungry," Pippin said plaintively to the moon, and he rolled his head (lying upon Merry's broad arm) and slid one finger down Diamond's knee. She made a soft sound and bent her head to kiss his curls. Merry grinned, turning his head to listen to her belly (where his head rested).

"You're hungry, too," he said, pushing his nose upward to nuzzle at the soft, dark crease beneath her breast.

"I am," she agreed, yawning. "And sleepy, and needful of a bath."

Putting themselves back together was a languid affair, slow and decorated with quiet laughter and semi-horrified squeaks as they learned (Diamond) or were reminded (Pippin and Merry) what happens to clothing and hair after hours of love outdoors. Finally they looked presentable enough that no one would assume, upon seeing them, that they had only just sated their bodies and hearts in the open air.

Diamond hugged the rolled up blankets to her body as they walked, body aching pleasurably, shoulders bumping against Pippin's on one side and Merry's on the other. In the long corridors of Brandy Hall, lit dimly by far-spaced sconces, she bade her lovers goodnight and slipped into her room to bathe and sleep alone.

Pippin kissed her mouth and Merry kissed her hand, and they padded silently away to Merry's rooms.

Pippin closed the door behind them and turned to rest in Merry's arms. They stood swaying sleepily for a long time in the darkness, until finally they roused enough to undress and curl into bed together.

"I've missed you so," Pippin whispered, pulling Merry's arm over his waist and curling back into his body.

"I am so sorry, Pippin," Merry said. He rubbed his nose into Pippin's riot of curls. "I should never have doubted you."

"Merry-mine." Pippin kissed his forearm. "You've Diamond to thank."

"I've Diamond to thank for much," Merry murmured, and Pippin giggled a little. "I wish she were here with us now."

"I, too," Pippin said.

"Do you think I will ever find a lass like her for my own?" Merry's voice was sad.

Pippin snuggled into him. "I don't know," he said honestly. "But perhaps so. I can no more predict lasses than I can the weather in Harad."

"Mmmm." Merry's breathing was evening out. "We should set Diamond to looking for me."

Pippin yawned. "She would manage it," he agreed, and slid into sleep, grateful for Merry's warmth and solidity and missing Diamond's slight weight in his arms.

~*~

When he woke up she was there, breathing softly between Merry and he.

Pippin propped himself upon one elbow and watched them both for a long time. She lay in Merry's arms, her back to his front. He had his face pressed into her dark hair, one strong arm over her waist and the other tucked beneath his head. Her hand lay curled upon the bed; as he watched, she frowned in her sleep and pushed it clumsily across the linen, searching for something. When her fingers pressed to his chest the frown smoothed away and she was still again, but for the steady rise and fall of her breast.

"Diamond," he whispered, and lay down, his face to hers.

"Mmm." The little line between her black brows appeared again, and her freckled nose wrinkled. She opened sleepy eyes with an effort. "Love."

"When did you come in?" he asked.

"I couldn't sleep," she murmured, green eyes sinking shut. "I was lonely."

He smiled and kissed her mouth. "We are a scandal waiting to happen."

Her lips curved, eyes still closed. "I always was. You and Merry have been for years."

"That's true." He slid one arm about her. "Come here."

"No." She pursed her lips. "M'comfortable." She pushed gently back into Merry's warm, solid body.

He laughed, a breathy little gust across her face. "I knew no good could come of this."

"_You_ come _here_," she murmured, and pulled weakly at him.

He kissed her lips again, her chin, the smooth skin of her throat as she tipped her head back. "Mmm. You are so beautiful."

"Don't be stupid," she sighed, but now his mouth was at her breast, and her fingers tangled in his hair, words fading away to soft, helpless breaths as he moved down her body.

Merry woke up when she moaned, and smiled with his eyes still closed, tightening his arms about her, moving with her motion until he felt her sigh and shudder in his embrace, heard Pippin's low gurgle of laughter from beneath the blankets. Soon after Pippin wriggled upward, hair tousled, face rosy and wicked. "Good morning," he said quietly, kissing her eyelids and then leaning to kiss Merry's.

"Good _night_," she muttered insistently, and pulled him down. "Hours yet till morning."

"How do you know?" Pippin said, but Merry put a hand over his mouth.

"Hours," he agreed without opening his eyes. "Sleep now."

Pippin grinned and submitted, snaking his arms round her, brushing Merry's fingers with his own. Their mingled exhalations wafted across his face, and sleep pulled him downward again. "You have to find Merry a wife," he yawned into Diamond's ear.

"Mmm." She hummed. "And how shall I do that?"

"Find someone who already knows what you've taught us," Merry whispered into her hair.

"How to share," Pippin sighed, tucking his head into her neck.

They slept.

 

~ _the end_ ~


End file.
